Another great question from one of our tech tips readers. Location-based services like Foursquare and Facebook places are spreading like wildfire, but users be concerned about their privacy? If you’re not familiar with these services, let me explain…
About a year ago, a crop of location-based social networks started becoming very popular. The most popular of this crop is Foursquare. With Foursquare, you can “check in” to a location using the GPS on your mobile phone. Foursquare is essentially a game. You earn points for each place that you check in and unlock badges for discovering new things. You can also use it to see where your friends are hanging out and to read their reviews of places they’ve been. Facebook took note of its growing popularity and recently launched a service of its own called Places. This service is similar to Foursquare in that you can check in to a location with your smartphone, but it doesn’t have the gaming features. However, you can tag your Facebook friends in your places updates, and you can see who else has checked in at the same location (whether or not they are a Facebook friend).
When talking about Foursquare or Facebook Places, I often hear: “Isn’t it dangerous to tell everyone on the internet where you are?” I covered a little bit on that topic in this post a few months back. I have done some more research on the topic, and why it is very easy to see how Places and Foursquare could be dangerous, there is little evidence to show that it actually is dangerous…yet. For example, if you check in at restaurant in a town in another state, it is obvious that you are far away from your empty home, leaving you susceptible to burglaries (right?). However, there hasn’t been an outbreak of robberies in the homes of Foursquare users. With Facebook Places, the default is set to only share your location with your Facebook friends, so that means you should be safe to share your location. But what if one of your Facebook friends is an old boyfriend or girlfriend who’s trying to stalk you? And besides, how well do you know all of your Facebook friends in real life?
From what I’ve read, if you have a visitor in your own home who decides to use Facebook places to check in, they can list your home as a public place. Your address will be displayed for all their friends to see, and you have no choice in the matter. Now, that seems like a major privacy violation.
For me, the jury’s still out. It sounds like a fun way to connect with friends, but at what risk? Are those of us concerned about privacy and safety being paranoid or prudent? Only time will tell. In the meantime, if you choose to use Facebook Places, do so at your own risk. Read the Privacy FAQ’s here and adjust your settings as you see fit.
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